Friday, November 19, 2010

I think I'm a horrible blogger

... or that I'm just horrible at updating. I tend to get something in my mind and just run with it without taking the time to chronicling the process. So on this find Friday morning, I saw my camera and *finally* realized that I haven't taken a single picture of my current project or the process. A while back i stumbled upon alamode's quilt as you go method. Basically, you make quilt a bunch of smaller quilt sandwiches and then attach them to make a final big quilt. I've heard many good things about this method since quilting a large quilt is pretty hard on a short arm machine. The past couple of quilts I put together always had fabric gathering on the back and (although minor) looked bad. In an effort to improve my quilting skills and try out some new techniques, I set out on this venture.

I needed a design and I came up with a simple block pattern.

There are 6 different block designs, and with each design I used 4 different fabrics to create 5 distinct blocks for each design. In total, there are 30 different blocks to be quilted to the backing and then put together. I've already made the 30 different quilt tops, but didn't get a chance to take a picture of them before the battery in my camera died. :( I did get a chance to take pictures of some mistakes I've made. Hopefully you can learn from them...

So you can see the fabric puckering, a recurring theme in my quilting it seems... :( Then i realized that I was using the regular presser foot.

... So I popped on the walking foot and voila! the entire thing is nice and smooth and more perfect than the last one! yay!

I never realized the awesomeness of the walking foot. I mean I read that it really helps when you have multiple layers of fabric, but my last quilt still puckered. I think I'm just not pinning the sandwich smoothly. Will need practice on that.

As for the backing, I had some white on black fabric that I found in the remnants pile at Joann's that I can't find a use for. So I thought it would make a nice pieced look with a common theme.

So here is one with pretty flowers.

And here is another one. With this one, I decided to just follow the lines on the fabric pattern.

Which made an interesting pattern on the front. :)

I still have a huge pile of quilt tops to be quilted to the backs. I'm about to try some free motion quilting. The blocky design and the fabric pattern should make it "interesting."

Now, lets talk about quilt appreciation. When I show my husband my newly finished quilt, his usual response is "oh that's nice." He doesn't really reach for a quilt when he's cold on the couch, he prefers to just put on another jacket and stick his foot under my butt. So I'm on the couch alone and is the only one that uses my quilt. Then it got cold. My dog looked cold when she was chilling on the couch, so I put one of my first quilting tries on her. Now she's not so cold :). I'm glad someone besides me appreciates and actively uses one of my quilts.

Followers

Hi there!

I am a lawyer by training. However, that is not where my interest lies. I love making things - food, bags, quilts - basically, anything that is not clothing.
So please look around, learn from my mistakes, and thanks for stopping by!